10 STORIES, Feb. 9: Thursday pundits, plus Ezra Levant bonus

Thursday morning’s quarterbacks on the PM in China, the NDP in Quebec, the trends in the Census … and a baby in the House.

In China, a leap forward by CanadaEditorial, The Globe and Mail“The foreign investment promotion and protection agreement with China is a significant accomplishment, in this respect putting Canada ahead of the United States and Europe. The fruits of Stephen Harper’s visit may not be glamorous – beef tallow is among the topics – but they add up to a surprising success, considering the Prime Minister’s initial reluctance to engage in personal diplomacy with Chinese leaders.”

How to influence China on human rights: A guideCampbell Clark, The Globe and Mail“How does a prime minister raise topics that offend his hosts when doing more business with them is crucial to Canada’s economy? There’s no Miss Manners guidebook to threading that needle. So as a public service, and with the help of some Canadian experts on China, here’s a handy etiquette guide. First, remember the point. You want to sell stuff, sure, but when it comes to human rights and issues like Syria, the goal isn’t just to say you’ve raised it, but to influence China. It is, as one expert said, about the faith, not the catechism.”

Beatty’s list: Business priorities and political realitiesJohn Geddes, Maclean’s“(Beatty’s) apparently forgotten how certain matters are not to be raised in polite political company. Like ending the way Employment Insurance rules favour perennially high-employment regions, notably parts of the Atlantic provinces and Quebec. On a sensible list of 10 “barriers to competitiveness” laid out by Beatty in a news conference just off Parliament Hill, the Chamber’s plea for EI reforms to “improve fairness and increase incentives for the unemployed to return to work or relocate to find work” stood out. The very words send chills down spines around Ottawa.”

NDP leadership campaign hasn’t begin to jell Chantal Hebert, The Toronto Star“While normally there are many potential considerations that go into the choice of a leader, the exceptional auspices under which this campaign is taking place demand that one take precedence over all the others. The NDP 2011 breakthrough in Quebec is a historical opportunity that was a very long time coming. It amounts to the party’s best chance to become a serious contender for federal power since the New Democrats under Bob Rae earned its audition in a major province in 1990. But there is a potential downside and it is significant.”

Baby blues in the CommonsBarbara Yaffe, Vancouver Sun“Why children should be permitted to enter the Commons during official votes is perplexing given that most ordinary Canadians are not permitted to bring their own children anywhere near their offices. The no-kids guideline only reflects common sense for most folks who tend to be distracted by even well behaved offspring.”

Labour loses its advantageTerence Corcoran, National Post
“A rising Canadian dollar cuts many ways in the world of business decision-making. A high Canadian dollar gives Canadian-based manufacturers an advantage of up to 30% in the purchase of capital goods, especially goods made in the United States. But that advantage goes only so far in creating a competitive advantage.”

Toronto transit gets welcome injection of momentumChris Selley, National Post“For now, the vote stands as a win for common sense — or commoner sense, at least. And it’s an own goal for a Mayor who seems to genuinely believe he was elected solely by people who think LRTs are Satan’s chariots. Reality has forced Mr. Ford, like any mayor, into many climb-downs. But his death grip on his transit preferences remains, despite daunting feasibility reports on the Sheppard subway and his inability to gain the necessary support of council for his agreement with Metrolinx to bury the entire Eglinton line. He must regret not seeking that support before councillors grew their collective spine.”

Making sense of the 2011 CensusMunir Sheikh, Ottawa Citizen“It is a statistical fact that a voluntary survey cannot become a substitute for a mandatory census because of uneven response rates from different population groups and different size geographic areas. Increasing the sample size cannot offset this problem, and may actually make it worse. Hence, many data users including the federal government will lose the data quality they need. Furthermore, to the extent that the long-form census data provide a benchmark for other Statistics Canada surveys, there is a risk that the quality of data from these other surveys would suffer. We would need to wait a year for the survey results to see the quality of the new data. However, two observations regarding the quality of the new survey data have been made by many, based on statistical theory: first, these data would not be strictly comparable to the data from previous censuses, although comparisons would continue to be made in the absence of anything else; and, second, data for some smaller sub-groups of the population and smaller geographical areas may not be released because of unacceptable quality. As the clock is ticking for a decision on the 2016 census, I hope the government would consider restoring the long form census.”

Census shows Ontario no longer a place to growMichael Den Tandt, Postmedia News
“Ontario is dying. It’s a slow dissolution, rather than a precipitous or cataclysmic decline. It has taken years to set in and will continue to unfold for years to come. But the pattern in the 2011 census data is unmistakable and, it would seem, irreversible.”

Thursday-morning bonus:

Liberal academics
Ezra Levant, The Source
“Who’s the most liberal of them all? Not journalists, not politicians, but university professors. Seriously, a new study shows it and proves it — they’re the most liberal of the lot. … I think there’s been a lot of new fields of study that perhaps 50 years ago didn’t exist – like peace studies, conflict studies, women’s studies, critical studies — all of these things that are a little bit loosey-goosey compared to mathematics, engineering, hard sciences. Is it that liberals choose the soft sciences and the conservatives stick to the rocks and stuff?”